damage from mountaintop removal, including ending fast-track permitting of projects, closing loopholes that allow coal companies to dump waste rock into streams, and reasserting federal oversight over lax state reviews. An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study estimated that by 2012, mountaintop removal projects will have destroyed or seriously damaged an area larger than Delaware and buried more than 1,000 miles of mountain streams in mining debris. The White House said that the EPA, the Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will work together to more closely monitor mountaintop removal projects, but officials offered few specifics about how the new guidelines would work in practice. A recent EPA review allowed 42 of 48 mountaintop removal projects to proceed, prompting some environmental groups to accuse the administration of continuing the lax standards of the Bush administration.

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The Warriors of Qiugang, a Yale Environment 360 video, chronicles a Chinese village’s fight against a polluting chemical plant. It was nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
Watch the video.